£20-£25 an absolute bargain for that lineup. Plus it's not like most other city fests in that it's on from about lunchtime til 6am the next day with venues close enough to hop around between bands. Thus plenty of bang for your buck.

And it may lack "big" names but its eclecticism is pretty commendable. Plenty of DIS-friendly stuff sitting next to things that will satisfy the more pop-inclined, twee types, chart guitar crap, etc.

This year, sure, the lineup is pretty awesome (I'm genuinely really excited about it) but my jaw did drop a bit at the price of the regular tickets. Wish I'd had some money around when the early birds were on sale. Did they make a loss last year, or has the cost of the thing just risen a lot?

and it was absolutely shit last year, bands didn't show up and they were charging a fiver for the piece of paper with the set times on. and while it was across 2 days, there were only enough decent acts for one day spread incredibly thinly.

Last year there were big gaps where I sat around doing nothing because there was nothing on worth seeing. This year there should be enough going round that I'll always be highfooting it to some venue to catch the next slot.

I think I might have to go for Vivian Girls, if only because after Crystal Stilts I'm sure I'll still be wanting some of the similar stuff.

My plan is, I reckon, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and AC Newman at Trent main hall, then head upstairs for Maps, across to Rock City for Mumford & Sons, then go to the Social and park myself there through to Abe Vigoda. I like that they've grouped all the most hipster bands at the Social - they know their audience, clearly.